I've written in the past a few times about my friend Steve Fiffer back in Chicago (okay, Evanston...).  Steve is a wonderful writer, with many non-fiction books to his credit -- including most recently collaborating on the memoir of Civil Rights legend C.T. Vivian. His wife Sharon is also an accomplished writer of the "Jane Wheel" mystery series.  And his mother was a medical technician in my dad's doctor office for years.

A few years ago, Steve and Sharon come up with the idea for a website that they called Storied Stuff, which I've mentioned here.  They call it "Show-and-Tell for grownups."  Basically, they get people to write in brief stories about treasured items them have, which they've kept for decades. The site came about during the Pandemic, as a way to draw people close together -- but it's continued on since with great success, now with over 500 stories, many of them deeply touching, some of them fascinating.  As Sharon has said about the project, "Every bit of stuff we hang on to or are drawn to, tells a story. The universal, after all, is found in the specific.”

Well, it turns out that Steve and Sharon have just published the first volume of what they expect to be a three-volume anthology. 
​

I mention this for two reasons.  The first and most important is because their effort is such a good one.  The other, because they include one of the two short pieces I wrote for the site.  

It's a story I wrote about baseball cards, though not the general idea of collecting them, but rather deals with two very special cards that I still have to this day which stand out in baseball history for a particular reason.  It's a story about an event that half a century later is still galling to Cubs fans, but no doubt gives the inveterate Chris Dunn great pleasure -- what is considered the worst trade in the history of baseball, known in baseball lore as "Brock-for-Broglio."  And I have cards for the players involved from before the trade,  This is that tale.

I wrote about this here twelve years ago, but it's is an especially great time to repeat the story.  That's because today, May 8, is the 80th anniversary of arguably one of the two most-famous radio broadcasts in history.  One, of course, is Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds.  The other is On a Note of Triumph by Norman Corwin, which celebrated the Victory in Europe by Allied Forces, commemorating the end of combat there in 1945.

(The defeat of the Nazis and fascism is another excellent reason to celebrate this broadcast today.)

Though his name is not likely recognized as readily today, there is a generation who grew up on, was entertained by and educated from the influential pen of Norman Corwin.  He was known as the Poet Laureate of Radio and is easily the most-acclaimed writer in radio broadcasting, because no other name comes even a close second.  His acclaim was such that his name was included as part of the title of his radio shows, a rare (perhaps unique) honor, something generally reserved for star actors – or corporations – alone.  The show on CBS, 26 by Corwin presented original hour-long plays written and directed by him each week, live.
?

The Norman Corwin website -- which is filled with tons of articles and audio links, and video, and links to his many books -- can tell you a lot more.

Previous to writing about it here, I also wrote about this broadcast several years before for The Huffington Post, but it always deserves its airspace.  On a Note of Triumph, after all, was a special event.  So renowned, even at the time, that it was released on record, and some CBS radio stations re-broadcast it every year for over five decades.  Its renown is such that it can still be heard online, in fact, for years it was on NPR’s website, but I'll embed it below, directly. 

(By the way, television, remember, didn't even exist yet.  The style of the broadcast, to be clear, is very much of its time and topic. The achievement remains monumental.)

NPR had a wonderful hour-long radio documentary about Corwin on its site, as well, hosted by Charles Kuralt, filled with many rich audio clips from the archives.  Indeed, speaking of such things, there not only is a movie documentary on Norwin Corwin, but it won the Academy Award in 2006, A Note of Triumph:  The Golden Age of Norman Corwin.   And as for Academy Awards, Corwin himself was nominated for one, writing the adapted screenplay to Lust for Life, starring Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh.

Corwin’s 1941 broadcast honoring the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights was heard by an unimaginable 63 million people, the largest in U.S. history.  To comprehend this number, that was half the population of the entire nation.  When CBS celebrated its 50th anniversary with a week-long jubilee of its primetime schedule, that glorious, epic tribute at the end, read by Walter Cronkite, to put a "Network at Fifty" in full perspective – was written by Norman Corwin

Take a listen to On a Note of Triumph, if you have a chance, even if only for a short part of it.  The style will be something most people aren’t accustomed to.  But not only was it a different time, it was also a different medium than most people today are accustomed to.  There was no television, remember.  People listened to radio.  Dramas, sitcoms, variety shows, news, talk, sports, political speeches, everything.  They listened and created the worlds in their imagination.  It was also a profoundly patriotic time, when the country had just finished one part of a world war that was deeply understood and just as widely supported, a war where the nation as a whole was asked to sacrifice, and did.  A war that defeated the Nazis attempt to take over the world.  However its style comes across today, On a Note of Triumph is a document, almost poetic, fully proud and grand, of another time and other sensibilities.  A majestic reminder of art, craft and a people.  Honoring the noble victory and hope of brotherhood, yet also asking hard questions about its cost.

Norman Corwin  passed away in 2011, at the age of 101 years.  He kept writing (his work could often be read in Westways magazine, among others), and still taught until at least 97– he was a professor at the University of Southern California.  But then, he never really expected to slow down.  His older brother Emil lived to 107 (passing away on a few months earlier), and their father Sam lived to 112.

Levi’s should only have genes this good.

Back in 2008, when he was a mere, sprightly 96, I had the chance to briefly meet the good fellow, thanks to my friend -- and his longtime friend -- David Rintels (an occasion at which I was able to have him sign a now-cherished copy I had of a collection of his radio dramas), and also got to hear him speak at one of the great-many events he had in his honor.  He ended the evening by answering questions from the audience, one of which was what he’d like his obituary to read.  It’s hard to describe his timing – but imagine laughter building after each perfectly-timed Corwininan pause.  After getting the question, he thought a moment and then at last said:

“Norman Corwin was killed today.

“Shot in a parking lot.

“By a jealous rival

“Of his mistress.”

But that will have to wait.  Norman Corwin will always be around.  As will On a Note of Triumph.  Written and presented 80 years ago, today.
​

Back on March 29, 2011 -- another time, another almost quaint era it almost seems -- I wrote a couple of articles about what I called the Republican Party's longstanding War on Education.  Though I've reposted the articles since, the topic seems more than timely to address again, now that Trump and his team have begun pushing efforts to get rid of the Department of Education. 

To clarify, "have begun" merely refers to this current effort.  It is hardly a new concept for the party.  Indeed, I address their calls for shuttering the Department back in the second of those 2011 articles.

Raising the issue has always been a disturbing bugaboo for Republicans, outraged that anyone would even dare have the gall to just suggest their party is against education, no matter how much evidence supports the long-documented fact.  But as I wrote a decade-and-a-half ago --
​ 
"It’s simple:  if you don’t want to be angered when your candidates are perceived as less than brilliant, then promote brilliance.  Don’t make it your platform to abolish the Department of Education.  Don’t claim that opinion supplants fact."
 
To which I could now add, don't claim that "alternative facts" exist and supplant fact. What I also noted at the very end is something I think most-especially and importantly bears repeating today as Trump and his enablers try to force a divisive wedge between the parties --

"Ultimately, though, there is something far more important at issue than mere politics. 
 
"Will Durant, with his wife Ariel, wrote the legendary Story of Civilization.  Eleven volumes, over 8,000 pages of discovery that remains today insightful, even-handed and remarkable.  And after they finished, they put together The Lessons of History.  Written over 40 years ago, in 1968, its perception is as fresh as any news headline you will read."

And since the words that the Durants wrote, now almost 60 years ago, remain prescient, here, then, is the first of my articles on the MAGOP War on Education. 

                                        Every Child Left Behind
                                               March 29, 2011
 
Several years ago, I had a realization: conservatives don’t care about education. 
 
It’s a generalization, I admit.  And sounds outlandish.  Yet for the past 60 years, conservatives have made crystal clear their utter disdain for education.  Hoping to convince others.
 
It began in 1952.  When Dwight Eisenhower ran for president against Adlai Stevenson, the contemptuous attack Republicans made was that Stevenson was “an egghead.”  Someone who was really – smart.  And you just can’t trust those smart people.
 
In 1960, when Richard Nixon ran against John Kennedy, the Republican blast was that JFK was advised by his “Harvard Mafia.”  Smart people.  So smart that they were dangerous.  And you can’t trust those smart people who go to good colleges.
 
When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, he hated those smart people who go to colleges so much that students made his Enemies List.  And later his "get tough" policies on student dissent (including wanting the Secret Service to beat up protestors) resulted in Republican governor Jim Rhodes sending armed troops sent the campus of Kent State University -- and four "enemy" undergraduates were killed.
 
In 1988, George Bush claimed to be “the Education President” – yet on an campaign stop in Los Angeles told a rally of service employees that not everyone had to go to college.  A valid sentiment, certainly, but for a candidate supposedly promoting education, it leaked his true feelings.
 
And in 2000, George W. Bush failed to fund his “No Child Left Behind” education program.
 
It’s continued for 60 years, as conservatives have demeaned public education, pounding away at the national consciousness that learning for the masses is a bad thing to be scorned and mistrusted.
 
There’s an understandable – and historic – reason for this, of course, because the less educated the public is, the more it relies on authority figures, rather than question anything.  And the more that education is disdained, the less that inconvenient facts will be believed.
 
And so, instead, we get an attitude that challenges any assertion of education with a contemptuous, “So, you think you’re better than the rest of us??” – conditioning people to wear with pride that they know less.  In all other areas of life, we want the best.  We want more riches, more success, to be faster, stronger, cooler – better at everything.  Except, after 60 years of conservative pounding against education, not to be as smart as we and our children can be.
 
And while this conservative effort has been surreptitious over the past 60 years, it’s finally released itself:  open, unrelenting Republican attacks in Wisconsin against teachers – teachers, for goodness sake! – and a widespread Republican war against education.
 
In Florida, $3.3 billion has been cut from education over the next two years [UPDATE: under then-Gov. Rick Scott, now the state's U.S. senator] almost 15% from the education budget to our children.  While $1.6 billion has been given in corporate tax breaks.
 
Texas has proposed $9.8 billion in cuts in education assistance to school districts.  (Bringing a loss of 100,000 jobs.)
 
Wisconsin cut $834 million from state aid to K-12 education over the next two years.  That’s 20% of the proposed cuts in the budget.  And cuts to teacher pay and pensions.
 
We have always heard the praise that teaching is the most important job.  That teachers are preparing our most precious resource, our children, for the future.  How teachers are underpaid heroes.  But from the other side of their hypocritical mouths, conservatives will slam teachers as lazy slackers with three months of vacation, overpaid plunderers of public pensions – and for 60 years desensitize the public for stripping away public education.
 
And now, they couldn’t be any more clear:
 
Last Wednesday in Iowa, three prospective Republican presidential candidates bluntly stated their condemnation of public education at a home schooling rally.
 
"The public school system now is a propaganda machine," said Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX).  “And they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American."  Like, apparently, the Pledge of Allegiance.
 
"It is not up to a bureaucrat to decide what is best for your children," insisted Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who home-schooled five children.  "We know best."  Except about U.S. history.  Home teacher Bachman recently placed the cornerstone of the American Revolution – Lexington and Concord – in the wrong state.
 
"That's all we want,” said Herman Cain, a prominent businessman testing a GOP presidential run. “For government to get out of the way so we can educate ourselves and our children the old-fashioned way."  Note:  “the old-fashioned way” included one teacher for six grades in one room, few women and minorities, and teaching math with an abacus.
 
But it was left to the event’s host, Justin LaVan, to explain plainly how so many conservatives truly see education.  "Talking about our Creator.  Our rights that came from our Creator, acknowledging that and giving Him the glory."  Of course, that’s why God invented church.  For educating children to succeed in a global community where others are learning science, history and geography, it’s a disaster.  If prayer worked in school, every kid would get straight-A’s.
 
And in the end, that disaster is what conservatives have long wanted from education.  No need to learn anything.  No public education.  Just private schools and home schooling.  Which is the end of an educated nation. 
 
Private schools limit education to those who can afford it.  Home schooling limits education to families where one parent can afford to stay home.  While hoping that the parent completed high school.
 
This is known as every child left behind.
 
But for conservatives, that’s okay.  The wealthy and privileged will get their children a great education.  And the rest of America?  You’re on your own.
 
Public education is what helped make America the envy of the world.  A nation of well-informed citizens.  Leading the way in the space race, technology, finance, and medical advances.
 
But conservatives? They want to go back to “the old fashioned way.”  Like the Dark Ages.  Where kings and the aristocracy ruled.  And you peasants, obey thy overlord. 
 
Make no mistake, this is nothing new.  The attack against education is the drug that conservatives have been pushing through history.

The other song, "Look for Small Pleasures," is quite nice, in a small, charming way.  In fact, it even had a bit of life outside the show and was recorded by several people, with moderate success.  ​

​And of course we have to follow that up with something from 1776, with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards.  So, here then is "The Egg."

Well, it’s been quite a couple of days, so far.  On that first night, I was getting a lot of calls, emails and texts from relatives back in Chicago, watching news of the Los Angeles fires, and asking if I was all right and how close it was and if I was going to evacuate.
 
I much appreciated their concern – and completely understood:  the continual video on the news was horrific, and the fire came closer to me than any in all my time in Los Angeles.  Maybe 5-6 miles.  But although it was close, I wasn’t in any danger, which I would explain.  (The toughest question asked was “Do you have somewhere to evacuate to??!” – because I didn't want to frighten them further since most of my friends are on the Westside, and even closer to the fire zone than me.  I was offering my guest room to them.)
 
I did have my electricity go out for 15 hours, but compared to what else was going on in fire areas almost doesn’t qualify as much more than a temporary inconvenience.
 
But of course, what stood out most for me was not just what was sure to be massive devastation, but on a personal note were all of the people I knew in very real danger in the Palisades, or at nearby risk.  I was able to get in touch with one friend whose home was directly in the heart of Pacific Palisades, and his family was able to get out in the afternoon, thankfully.  Another friend lives in northwest Santa Monica (that borders the Palisades) right next to the evacuation zone.  He decided to evacuate and stayed in my guest room.  He safely went back home yesterday.  A third friend was packed and ready to leave as soon as he and his wife got an evacuation notice.  Happily, none came, though they did decide to evacuate to their son's home.  But so very sadly, my friend in Pacific Palisades lost his house.  I can't even imagine the feelings.  Fortunately, he has good coverage and a temporary place to live – but it’s not just the loss of a home and everything in it, but the major disruption to one’s life to have to regroup and start over.
 
Now, multiply that by thousands, and the devastation of all the fire zones – mainly for the Pacific Palisades and Pasadena/Altadena.  With one person, when such a loss happens, agonizing as it is you may have the option of rebuilding and eventually returning to the life and community you had before.  But in the Palisades and wide areas of Pasadena and elsewhere, there's no life to return to, no community, it's gone.  At some point, those villages and communities happily will be built up again. And may even (or likely) flourish with a new vibrance. Growth is the way of the world, a new start.  But it will be starting from scratch.
 
What also was so awful was another loss.  But first, some background.

In my earlier days after graduate school and before I seriously got involved in the film industry, I worked for 3-4 years for the California State Park Service at Will Rogers State Historic Park.  It was a great place – Will Rogers’ home, polo field, equestrian arena and barns, and grounds so wide that they were used as a three-hole golf course (which he put in when an actor friend, Lewis J. Stone, had badly injured his legs in an accident and recuperated there, for which Will Rogers converted the grounds to the golf course as an incentive for Stone to get walking in every day) and extensive forest land.  It was a wonderful job – I learned to twirl a rope and jump in it while spinning (really, honest!) and even considered applying for taking the California Park Ranger test.  Until my father basically said, “You didn’t go to film school and get a Masters degree in screenwriting to become a park ranger.”  He was right.  I loved the park service, but am glad I stuck with my goal.
 
The Rogers ranch house, up a winding road north of Sunset Blvd. in the Palisades, was tremendous.  It was two connected wings, full of historic mementos from his travels and life, cowboy artwork from his renowned friends (notably Charles Russell, who Rogers thought was far more authentic – being a former cowboy, like himself -- to the more famous Frederic Remington), a great library filled with books inscribed to him by his famous friends, letter and more.  I would periodically find hidden material as I wandered through the place, things that were never seen by the public and that probably even the staff didn’t know were there.  I surreptitiously made copies of some of it, and still have it – a book inscribed by Harry Houdini, a book with a magnificent thank you note carefully hand-printed by Helen Keller, a framed letter of thanks stuck in a drawer written by Theodore Roosevelt.  Things like that.
 
(By the way, if you ever see The Will Rogers Story on TCM, it’s not a bad telling of his life.  His son, Will Jr., played his father, with Jane Wyman – Ronald Reagan’s first wife – as Betty Rogers.  And they did a great job creating the house, though they moved some of the furniture around as better for the movie.)
 
And so it was with a rush of deep memories and heartache that learned it too was lost in the fire yesterday.  That was a fear of mine as I followed the news.  And it was awful to have it confirmed. I don’t know how much was destroyed, but it seems that all the buildings were.  I saw a photo of one small structure almost all ashes and a partial shell, and it awful.  If there’s a happy note, it’s this sentence – “State Parks was able to evacuate the horses and some of the cultural and historical artifacts, including artwork, at Will Rogers SHP ahead of the fire.”

I have no idea what the insurance is like on the estate.  While I suppose it's possible that the Park Service will rebuild a re-creation of at least the home and perhaps some of the horse facilities, it's not something I expect.  We'll see.

About 40 years ago, there was a big Palisades fire when I was working at the park -- I was off that day, but drove in to help.  I did what little I was allowed to, like watering the roofs of the home, and took a few photos of the fire.  And happily, the ranch house and buildings were saved, though the grounds and surrounding forest had been overwhelmed.  I went back the next day and took photos of the devastation, following a path I'd taken a year before, that I'd photographed. And then followed the same path six months later to photograph the regrowth.
 
I recall one of my fellow park aides – a girl named Lisa – got upset at me for taking the pictures after the fire, but later one of the Rangers said he was glad I did because it was important to have a record of such things.
 
I can’t touch on the devastation of the current fire that was so much more massive and destructive.  And the great loss to my friends and others.  And so I don’t want to even try – it would be too small and give the wrong impression.  Instead though, with the loss of Will Rogers State Historic Park, I thought I'd end this all by honoring it with some of those photos that I took.  Some before the fire, and those during, the day after and six months later.
 
None of these touch on what’s going on now.  These 28 pictures serve only as my way of honoring this one historic loss, and commemorating all the others.

It starts with photos I took of the ranch house, grounds and forest land of his property around a year before the fire about 40 years ago.

Then, there was that day when I got a call about the fire in the Palisades and foothills, asking if I could come in to the park to help. 

As I got in the car, I saw this looming to the west, where I was headed.  Adding to the impact of it all is that I lived across the street of the Veterans Cemetery in West Los Angeles, and you can see the headstones at the bottom.

The next day, I went back to the park and took photos of the burned-out grounds, and followed the hiking trip I'd taken previously to show the same parkland.  I would imagine that this is much like it so sadly looks today -- but with the ranch house and all the other building and barns gone.

Then, about six months later, I took the same hike yet again to document the regrowth, showing how remarkable nature can be so soon.  Along with the mudslides and work left to do.

Happily, nature can grow back.  So sadly, the same can't be said for man-made structures.  Here is the ranch house yesterday.  That is the fireplace in the living room from the third photo above.

Happily, as noted above, the Park Service saved some of the cultural and historical materials, and artwork.  Their prescience and efforts are honored for protecting at least some of a legacy.

​Back in 2008, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about new discoveries surrounding the holiday classic, Handel's "Messiah."   Several months later, I followed it up with additional revelations.  Given that 'tis its season yet again - it seems like a fine time to repeat the story, as just another of the many holiday traditions.  Sort of like a very early, 18th century version of "The Grinch."  

But have a glass of nog, as well.  Fa la la...